


while you are not safe, i am not safe and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time

by Wolvesandwerewolves



Series: I’m With You in Rockland [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bugs and Insects, Delusions, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mentions of Blood, Relapse - Drug Use, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective Disorder, Vomit, drug overdose, graphic description of blood, its gross im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25789243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolvesandwerewolves/pseuds/Wolvesandwerewolves
Summary: Klaus has been off his meds for sixteen days. Ben is trying, but he doesn’t know what to do.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: I’m With You in Rockland [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865728
Comments: 20
Kudos: 169





	while you are not safe, i am not safe and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time

**Author's Note:**

> alright class today your homework is to read Howl by Allen Ginsberg 
> 
> bc he gave us this title and it just works so well
> 
> hm. if i keep referencing Frankenstein I should probably...read it...
> 
> anyways...please look at the tags. read them carefully. yeah i think this chapter might be rough.  
> thank you all so much for ur comments and kudos!! they help me every night when im writing <3 sorry i suck at answering lol

It takes Ben five days to convince his brother to go home. 

Klaus is terrified. He’s crying, on and off, and panting. He has not showered for four days. He hasn’t changed his clothes since they’ve been home, or brushed his teeth for three days. He’s hardly eaten anything, and he refuses to drink anything except sealed bottles of water. 

He has not slept in two days. 

He relapsed. Klaus took pills—Ben doesn’t even know what they _were_ , but there were four of them, tiny mundane capsules in a small plastic baggy and Klaus took _all of them._ And it just made everything worse. 

That was only twenty minutes ago. 

It’s two in the morning. Half past. On a regular night, they would be closing up the nightclub, around this time. But they’re not. Klaus hasn’t gone to work for over a week now.

Ben is afraid he’s going to have a heart attack. Or a seizure or _something_ but he’s sure that his brother took way too many of the drugs that he has been off of for five years. He’s acting too hyper, too intense, like he can’t stop moving but he can’t catch his breath.

Ben feels like it’s his fault. It is his fault. He told Klaus, months ago, to stop taking his meds. He didn’t stop him.

He wonders how Vanya is doing. She’s probably worried sick. _And she’s been through this before,_ he thinks. 

He’s not sure he could manage that. He’s not exactly managing it now, either.

Ben is terrified. 

The weather is getting cooler, he thinks. The skies are black overcast, clouds and too-bright street lamps winking out the stars. It feels too early and too late at the same time, something like an almost purgatory. Trees shiver in the wind, disrupting orange and almost-red leaves that fall to the ground in slow motion. 

Everything is in slow motion. Except for Klaus. Except for his shaky, rapid breathing and jerky movements.

Sixteen days ago, the leaves were only just beginning to fall. Sixteen days ago, at this time of night, he and his brother walked home from the club in the dark. And he watched as Klaus, barefoot and tiptoed, stepped on the few leaves he could find like it was a game. 

(Like he noticed Vanya does sometimes, too, in her boots, when they walk to the local bakery together on Sundays.) 

Klaus is barefoot now. He usually is. But he’s not slowly stepping on leaves to hear them crunch in the silence of the sleeping city. Ben wishes he was.

Two neighborhoods ago he stepped on a broken glass Coke bottle left out at the edge of the street by someone’s driveway. He laughed when he heard the muffled crunch, loud in the empty street, full body shaking with tears streaking down his cheeks. He bent over, picked the sharp, red-slicked pieces out of his calloused soles and threw them to the frosted grass. 

His messy footprints are still streaked too-dark against the pavement. 

There’s dried blood crusted to the length of his sleeve, too, and the makeshift tourniquet surrounding it. And dirty underneath his fingernails, hidden by the black chipped paint. The other night he punched the window of an abandoned factory downtown. Ben isn’t sure why—someone told him to, but it wasn’t a ghost or anyone he can see. 

It bled so much. Klaus didn’t even pass out, but his face became sickly grey-white and his lips paled. He gripped a broken shard tightly in his hand, cutting into the tattooed skin of his palm, and he looked fascinated by the way the blood dripped down his fingers. But that was all he did, thank God. He laughed at Ben begging him, and when he threw the glass he seemed almost surprised when it passed through him untouched.

_But at least they’re going home,_ Ben thinks. 

They’re almost to the apartment. Ben can see it from here. He’s walking alongside Klaus, hovering next to him and wishing he could help.

He’s probably helped enough. But he can’t leave.

“Shut up,” Klaus whispers, thumbs digging into the inside area where his nose connects to the beginnings of his brow bone. He sighs, the sound wet in his throat like a sob, and after it follows a manic laugh. 

Ben hasn’t said anything.

“I just need to make sure she’s safe,” he says, breathless. He nods to himself, fingers brushing over the long, open wound on his arm, haphazardly tied off with a motel pillowcase. 

Ben is surprised it’s not infected. Maybe he just can’t tell, yet. Klaus checked into the motel under the name Henry Clerval, because Ben has been reading him _Frankenstein_ for months. That was three days ago. 

Telling him Vanya was in trouble was the only way to get him to go home. Ben feels awful for it. He hopes Klaus forgives him, when this is all over with. 

He stands silent as he watches Klaus fiddle with the keypad. He’s trembling. It takes two tries, and when he finally gets the code right, he’s panting even more, on the edge of hyperventilating. He looks close to passing out.

But he swings the door open roughly, and Ben passes through after him. Klaus paces down the hallway quickly, stumbling over himself and using the wall to keep somewhat steady. 

The lighting in the hallway is the same as it always is, a noxious yellow that washes Klaus out. His hair is tangled, limp and greasy. His clothes are torn, and also greasy looking, stiff and stained red on both sleeves. There’s sweat, shiny on his forehead and darkening clothes under his armpits. His face is dirty, skin rough and off color, the tears on his cheeks cutting cleanly through the mess. There are bruises under his eyes, and he looks so exhausted, but he’s still so hyper. 

“Shut up, shut up,” Klaus whimpers. “Fuck. Not now. Please, just—” he shudders, eyes closed tight and wrinkling the skin around them. He gasps, shaking his arm out and brushing at his shoulder like there’s something there. 

There isn’t. But Ben knows what he sees. Four nights ago, he woke up in the motel bedroom panting, scrambling out of the tangled sheets and shaking himself. Maggots, he’d said. Roaches. Spiders. Moths. He’d striped, left everything in a scattered pile on the ground, including the pillowcase tourniquet. The cut had reopened in the shower. Ben watched as blood washed out down his arm, as it swirled around the drain, and later stained the off-white sheets thrown to the ground as a makeshift bed safe from the invisible bugs.

He’d gotten up to brush his teeth the night after and almost had another panic attack as he squeezed the toothpaste out of the tube. He threw both the toothbrush and the tube in the trash and went back to bed. He asked Ben later how the bugs had gotten in there, if he thought they always were and he’d been brushing his teeth with it for two days. 

“Come on,” Ben says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He feels out of his depth. “We need to help Vanya.”

Klaus gasps, and nods, trembling. His eyes are still closed. His voice is a rough whisper but it still sounds so loud in the long, empty halls. “Dad’s—Dad’s poisoning her. He’s evil, Ben, he’s going to kill us. He—he killed you, didn’t he?”

Ben nods. He doesn’t think arguing with Klaus is a good idea. He can’t and doesn’t want to explain that he still doesn’t know the circumstances of his own death. And anyway, it isn’t important. 

He just needs to get Klaus to walk the few more feet to their door. Vanya will know what to do. 

“And no one else knows,” Ben says. “So we need to tell Vanya. She has to know, Klaus.”

He’s not sure if playing into his delusions is the right thing to do. It probably isn’t. He wonders if he’d stayed a hallucination instead of a ghost, if they’d be here now.

“Okay,” Klaus says. He nods again, then opens his eyes and sways on his feet. “Fuck,” he mumbles, bending halfway over and throwing up on the thin carpet. 

He’s getting worse. Ben’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to stay upright, let alone—

“Come on,” he says, again. 

Klaus coughs, spits on the floor and gags when the thread hangs long down from his mouth. He wipes it off with the back of his hand, then gags again and drags his hand against his dirty clothes. He’s trembling and crying.

But he leans heavily against the wall and starts walking again. Ben lets out a heavy sigh of relief and follows next to him. 

The door is locked when he turns the knob. Klaus doesn’t have his keys. 

“Come on,” he hisses, knocking. He rattles the knob again, but he still can’t get in. He seems desperate, still panting and shaking against the door as he pounds on it. “Ben?”

“Okay,” Ben says. “But she can’t hear me.”

He passes through the walls and steps into the living room. Vanya is already awake, standing in one of Klaus’s t-shirts and some shorts, leaning against the wall as she talks on the phone.

She looks worried. Eyes wide and watery as she plays with the chord of the phone nervously. But she nods, frantically, and says in a shaky voice, “Thank you.”

She hangs up, wipes at her eyes and sighs. He wants to hug her or comfort her. He can’t. Maybe they wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him.

Ben goes back to Klaus. “She’s coming,” he promises. 

“Okay,” Klaus says, nodding jerkily. He’s still breathing hard. His skin is looking even more white-grey than earlier, like it was when he cut his arm the night before. Ben wonders if it’s bleeding again, or if it’s just the drugs he took. 

He can’t do anything. He can’t help his brother. 

“I don’t feel so good,” Klaus mumbles, trembling. He leans forward and throws up again, coughing wetly. 

“Klaus,” Ben says, worried. He steps forward, reaches out but his hand just passes through his shoulder. 

The door opens just as Klaus falls to the floor. 

**Author's Note:**

> sup fam. sorry im posting this late. I wrote, then scrapped, then rewrote, then rewrote, then rewrote this chapter so many times last night. and then tonight. and all afternoon as I was dog sitting. anyways
> 
> I know this is ‘just’ fanfic but I’m trying really hard to do my research and portray schizophrenia at least somewhat accurately and doing my best to make it non- offensive. bc mental illness gets a really bad rep in the media. And it sucks. im afraid the early edits of this chapter were pretty bad in terms of that too. I’m not quite sure this chapter is the ‘best’ either. But it’s better, and just like Ben (and diego and etc) I am learning,..so here it is! My best. Hope you like it!  
> If ur struggling with any sort of illness or if you have any illness and are doing really well, pls do not stop taking ur pills. if u r doing really well it’s probs bc the pills are working. if not pls talk to ur dr.  
> anyways this will all be ok I promise. Xoxo and goodnight lmao I love you


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